Driving lesson

I was still in a bad mood when I woke up yesterday morning and I had a driving lesson. Because of this, I took my time to wake up slow, because I would need all the energy I had for this lesson. I had doom scenarios in my head, where I would mess up everything, because my head is somewhere else.

As usual, my driving lesson started with telling my instructor what was on my mind. She knows that this influences the driving lesson, that’s why she always asks. She understood that I probably wasn’t going to perform at my best level, so she started off slow. Then something happened to me… I had to focus on what was happening, but not so much that my head would explode. It was the perfect amount of focussing where no other thoughts were allowed in, but my head wasn’t crammed with information either.

Suddenly my head cleared up. My mind went clear and I could focus on what I was doing. Along with this change, my mood changed too. I could see the bright weather that was outside and I felt confident in what I was doing again. Driving turned out to be very therapeutic! I loved my driving lesson and it allowed for me to have a clear view on my life again. This doesn’t mean that all my problems are solved, but it does mean that I can finally start making new plans on how to handle all of this.

This is how important a good instructor is. My previous instructor wasn’t trained to work with people with Autism. I started out happily driving, but she ended up just stressing me out. This new instructor changed everything and brought back my love for driving, and this cleared the way for new directions (pun intended) in my life. I wonder where this will take me.

Gaming memory lane

Tonight I have been reading up on a bit of game knowledge about Mario. Up until now I knew most things (like that the Super Mario Bros. 3 - World 3 tune is the same tune that’s used for the Fairy Fountain in Zelda), but it still led me to browse around on the internet to listen to those tunes, or watch some old cartoons that aren’t airing anymore, featuring those games.

I’ve spoken about memory association before. In that post I spoke about it in a negative way, but it can be very positive too. In this case it was very positive. Just listening to these tunes, or watching these cartoons, brought be back to my childhood. Especially the Super Mario Brothers tunes brought me back to all those times that I played on the NES. All those birthdays where friends and family asked us to bring out the NES so that we could play on it and we could show every new feature that we discovered.

I also remembered the first time I saw the Super Mario Brothers Super Show and the Mario anime they aired. All these things came back to me and for a moment I felt like I was back in those days. I’m not saying my childhood was all sunshine and roses at all, but I loved playing on the NES. This makes me want to get the NES out again and play some more. I think it’s somewhere in the attic where I can’t reach though… I might ask my brother… (it’s his NES actually)

And it’s not just Mario that I loved playing of course. Memories of playing Kirby and Duck Hunt and many more games also came back to me. I still remember that my brother once tried playing Duck Hunt with a small hand mirror and actually managed to shoot a few ducks… Now, excuse me while I’m off to listen to some more old game tunes.

More bad luck

This week I just can’t seem to catch a break…
A friend of mine has sunk in a very deep depression. I still haven’t solved all the events stuff. This Friday I was supposed to hold a (free) bingo, which was already postponed one week, when I found out that you have to notify this at City Hall through a form. Even when the bingo is free, but has prices. This form takes them two weeks to work through and file, so the bingo gets postponed again.

My best friend isn’t very happy at the moment either (for his privacy, I’ll leave the reasons out). And if all this wasn’t bad enough, I just heard that Aaron, who was maybe coming here for a holiday somewhere in December or January, unfortunately can’t make it anymore.

By the way, on itself all of the above would be manageable. But it’s on top of all the things I already mentioned before, as nothing of that has been solved yet. All of this is just too much going wrong in one week. In fact, in the middle of a very bad break down I told my mum: “Well, the one thing I got going for me is Aaron who might be coming…” Well, scratch that.

I still have a few friends and I got my family, which I didn’t forget, don’t worry. But I’ll need a bit more than that. Friends and family are great and I truly love them, but I need something in life just for me (like a job, or a volunteering thing, or something like that I mean) that is actually going well. Because right now I can’t see it.

If you can, feel free to mention it in a comment. I can truly use some positive things right now. Did I just ask for compliments? No I didn’t. I don’t need to hear great aspects of me. I’m not the type of person to ask for compliments, I feel compliments are something you need to earn, not ask for. I meant things that are going right for me, or things that I can do to get things back on track. Because right now, I can’t really see it myself and maybe others can.

Mixed feelings

My head is all messed up at the moment. I feel extremely happy and extremely sad at the same time. I keep having panick attacks and when I get too tired from the panick attacks, my head simply shuts down from all the sadness to protect myself and concentrates only on good things. I mean, up to the point where I can’t get anything productive done anymore. In other words, I’m a mess.

On the one hand some things are going quite well. Spending more time with my best friend has been very good for me. Also, I’ve been to my ex his birthday party today, which was the first time since the break-up that I’ve been at his home today. I was quite nervous for this, but everything turned out to be a lot of fun and we can still happily go back to being friends. This has relieved me a lot. Some more nice things happened in the social department. Also, I love putting events together which I’ve put a lot of time in last week.

On the other hand a lot of things seem to fall apart too. Having too much drama within these events is starting to eat away from me, as I’m very fragile already at the moment. Every event has drama, but where I’m at in my life right now, it’s hurting me more than usually. It’s actually keeping me from enjoying what I love doing most. I hate this, as without events I feel like I’m nothing, as events is what kept me going. (By the way, if anyone goes ‘I know what event you’re talking about!’ then my answer is; no you don’t. It’s not just about one event and there are also things going on that aren’t out in the open because they haven’t been properly discussed yet.)

At the same time the whole Fatigue Centre thing is eating away from me too, as I’m still waiting for the intake.

Being without a job, and with that a routine and confidence, also hasn’t done me any good. Besides that, I still didn’t get back all my energy from being unwell either, which makes all this harder to deal with too.

By the way the discussions at my previous job went and how I’m dealing with these events, I’m scared I panic just too fast to do what I want in life. I can handle constructive critique, that’s not it. In fact, that helps me to work better. But I’d really like for something to just work out without things escalating up to the point where everyone’s upset. Maybe it’s my doing, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But I could really use a project where something doesn’t turn out all drama.

But people keep telling me that this is normal for the business world. Then maybe I’m not cut out for the business world? Maybe I’m wrong and I really can’t handle critique as well as I’d like to. I don’t know. I’m actually typing this while panicking, which I always advise other people against, so it’s probably one big confusing text.

I’m sorry, I really needed to write this down, because I don’t know what else to do with this. If you read back, you’ll see that the only thing that’s really going well for me is meeting a few friends. Or at least, the only things that I can see going well while in this panicky state. Maybe I’m missing things, I don’t know. My point is that right now that’s all I can see and besides that I can only see everything around me falling down.

I’m sorry that my posts are being really sad lately, but that’s how I feel. I don’t want this blog to turn into a ‘pity me!’ blog, that’s not my intention. I just want to write about my life and how my Autism and Chronic Fatigue influence that. It just so happens that quickly after starting this blog, I lost my job and these things happened and I needed to find a new path again. A new path is scary for me. It usually means a lot of insecurity about everything and needing to drop certain things in my life. This scares me to no end and makes for these big emotion swings. Right now I have no idea what to do with this. All I know is that I don’t know anything. My life is one big question mark where people seem to expect me to have the answers. I don’t. I just have this question mark. You can have that question mark, I don’t want it, but I don’t have any answers for you.

Headache - 2

Another small update. I had a rough morning, as I was still feeling terrible and feared I wouldn't be able to come to the weekly autism meeting. I set my alarm to 2 hours later and slept some more. Luckily this seemed to do the trick and I feel slightly better now. I will be coming to the weekly autism meeting, but I won't be as active as I usually am.
I'm glad though, because I was looking forward to some company. Also, this probably means that I won't be unwell for that long.

Headache

Just a little update, seeing I can't really concentrate on typing out large texts.

At the moment I have a terrible headache. My head is bursting with pain, it feels terribly heavy, I'm dizzy and my temperature has risen a bit. I HATE being unwell. I hope I feel better after I have slept a bit, especially since I don't want to miss the weekly autism meeting.

So frustrating

I haven’t got much to talk about today, as there isn’t much action going on at the moment. On the other hand, there is plenty going on in my mind, as is usually the case. My mind doesn’t really seem to have an off-button. This can be a very good thing, as it helps me in solving problems, but it can be a curse too, as destructive thoughts run the show too.

At the moment I’m very frustrated with people who I think very highly of, but who keep talking themselves down. It’s not that I’m angry at them, don’t take me wrong. I’m frustrated with them, in the sense that it’s very frustrating when someone doesn’t seem to be able to see (all) the good sides of him/herself and I can. It makes me feel very sad for that person and it makes me want to yell all the good things about them straight in their faces. I’m well aware this doesn’t exactly help, as I’ll just make them feel as if I’m angry at them, while I really just feel sad for them... Nobody should feel like this about themselves.

There is one weird thing about this though: I can hardly see this when I feel bad about myself. When I feel bad about myself (I don’t at the moment, don’t worry), I can hardly see that I’m being that destructive about myself too. But when someone else who I think highly of is feeling bad about him/herself and seems to be having a hard time seeing their own good sides, it frustrates me to no end. And usually, when you try and tell them their good sides, they won’t accept it either.

And again, yes I am aware that I do this too once in a while. This is the weird part about it. Even though I have times like these too, it still frustrates me. Especially when I care a lot about that person. I don’t want anyone to feel bad about themselves, everyone should be happy and walking on rainbows and stuff. I know, that’s impossible, everyone is entitled to a little down time once in a while. Then why am I still so frustrated about it? Sometimes I confuse myself.